John C. Reilly Endures Humiliation To Make "Cyrus" a Hit

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In a summer marked for its flagging box office, "Cyrus" is causing chatter as the independent movie that could -- moving into overall top 10 box office list as it continues to roll out its release.

A large part of making the movie a success is watching John C. Reilly being willing to take most every kind of humiliation to push the dark and twisted plot along -- including an excruciating opening scene where Catherine Keener walks in on Reilly literally with his pants down.

PopcornBiz was brave enough to ask Reilly about his willingness to be so brave on screen…and whether he used a butt double in the opening scene.

"No I never use a butt double," Reilly laughed. "I'm not that vain. And they're too expensive. Besides, no one has an a-- like mine." (We have seen it before in Reilly's "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story" but managed to block the image out of our minds).

Reilly admits the scene was key to setting the tone for the movie. And clearly the story of his conflict with Jonah Hill has caught the attention of movie-goers.

"It's a great story and it needs to be humiliating at the beginning of the movie," says Reilly. "And it was."

Much of the awkwardness expressed in the movie was actually real-life awkward as well. From Reilly's drunken singing at a party to his introduction to future girlfriend Marisa Tomei, who walks over to Reilly while he's peeing in the bushes -- those were actually awkward moments to film as well. Tomei's introduction scene, one again with Reilly in a compromised position, was shot right after he met her.

"And then after the party scene the next thing we shot was us getting naked in bed together," says Reilly. "We met on Monday and its Thursday now and I see your naked body."

"It was one of those days when you say acting is really weird."

Fortunately, this was not Tomei's first sex scene.

"She's done a lot more sex scenes than I have so she was very comfortable and professional," says Reilly. "I just lay there amazed."

Published at 12:40 PM EDT on Jul 8, 2010 | Updated at 2:39 PM EDT on May 30, 2012